Tens of thousands bid farewell to Morgan Tsvangirai

Stockholm to honour Charlotte Rampling and Wong Kar Wai

The Stockholm International Film Festival will award special prizes this year to British actress Charlotte Rampling for Lifetime Achievement and Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, who will receive the Visionary Award.

British actress Charlotte Rampling will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Stockholm International Film Festival while Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai will receive the Visionary Award, organisers said Wednesday.

Rampling will receive the award at the 19th edition of the festival, which will take place in the Swedish capital next month, "for her impressive portrayals of some of the most memorable female characters in modern cinema," the organisers said in a statement.

"Few actors enter the big empty screen and inhabit it with the same grace, naturalness and confidence," the statement added.

Rampling, 62, who has lived in France since the late 1970s and speaks French fluently, first appeared in the 1965 film "The Knack ... and How to Get It."

She has since played a long line of both English and French roles, including in "Stardust Memories" in 1980, "The Verdict" in 1982, and more recently in the 2003 film "Swimming Pool" and "Vers le Sud" in 2005.

Wong Kar Wai, 50, will meanwhile receive his award for being "a visionary director who has moved audiences in every corner of the world with his cinematic language," festival organisers said.

The director of such films as the 1994 "Chungking Express," the 2000 "In the Mood for Love," and "My Blueberry Nights" from 2007, "has a unique ability to cast the creatures of the night in a romantic and moody light while capturing the beauty of the fleeting moment on the silver screen," the statement added.

This year's Stockholm Film Festival, which runs November 20-30, will also be dedicated to the memory of actor and director Sydney Pollack, who died of cancer last May, the organisers said.